"She Must Make The
Demand," The Secessionists Would Say, "And Then There Will Be War;
And After That We Shall
See whose ports will be blockaded!" The
Southerner has ever looked to England for some breach of the
blockade quite
As strongly as the North has looked to England for
sympathy and aid in keeping it.
The railway from Philadelphia to Baltimore passes along the top of
Chesapeake Bay and across the Susquehanna River; at least the
railway cars do so. On one side of that river they are run on to a
huge ferry-boat, and are again run off at the other side. Such an
operation would seem to be one of difficulty to us under any
circumstances; but as the Susquehanna is a tidal river, rising and
falling a considerable number of feet, the natural impediment in
the way of such an enterprise would, I think, have staggered us.
We should have built a bridge costing two or three millions
sterling, on which no conceivable amount of traffic would pay a
fair dividend. Here, in crossing the Susquehanna, the boat is so
constructed that its deck shall be level with the line of the
railway at half tide, so that the inclined plane from the shore
down to the boat, or from the shore up to the boat, shall never
exceed half the amount of the rise or fall. One would suppose that
the most intricate machinery would have been necessary for such an
arrangement; but it was all rough and simple, and apparently
managed by two negroes.
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